Man is born to live, not to prepare for life.

She was here on earth to make sense of its wild enchantments.

You and I, it's as though we have been taught to kiss in heaven and sent down to earth together, to see if we know what we were taught.

As for the men in power, they are so anxious to establish the myth of infallibility that they do their utmost to ignore truth.

A conscious attempt to fall asleep is sure to produce insomnia, to try to be conscious of one's own digestion is a sure way to upset the stomach. Consciousness is a poison when we apply it to ourselves. Consciousness is a light directed outward. it's like the headlights on a locomotive—turn them inward and you'd have a crash.

How wonderful to be alive, he thought. But why does it always hurt?

What is history? Its beginning is that of the centuries of systematic work devoted to the solution of the enigma of death, so that death itself may eventually be overcome. That is why people write symphonies, and why they discover mathematical infinity and electromagnetic waves.